tances do
not force them to work for their living, love nothing better than to lie
for long hours on a sofa, neither talking nor thinking, in easy gowns,
untrammelled by tight-fitting things. In the morning they put on a
_mantilla_ and go to mass, and besides, except to pay a polite visit on
a friend or to drive in the Paseo, hardly leave the house. They are
content with the simplest life. They adore their children, and willingly
devote themselves entirely to them; they seem never to be bored.

For them the days must come and go without distinction. Their fleeting
beauty leaves them imperceptibly; they grow fat, they grow thin,
wrinkled, and gaunt; the years pass and their life proceeds without
change. They do not think, they do not live: they merely exist, and they
die, and that is the end of it. I suppose they are as happy as any one
else. After all, taking it from one point of view, it matters very
little what sort of life one leads, there are so many people in the
world, such millions have come and gone, such millions will come and go.
If an individual makes no use of his hour what does it signify? He is
only one among countless hordes. In the existence of these handsome
creatures, so passionate and yet so apathetic, there are no particular
pleasures beside the simple joys of sense, but on the other hand, beyond
the inevitable separations of death, there are no outstanding griefs.
They propagate their species, and that, perhaps, is the only quite
certain duty that human beings have.

XVII

[Sidenote: The Dance]

Cervantes said that there was never born a Spanish woman but she was
made to dance; and he might have added that in the South, at all events,
most men share the enviable faculty. The dance is one of the most
characteristic features of Andalusia, and as an amusement rivals in
popularity even the bull-fight. The Sevillans dance on every possible
occasion, and nothing pleases them more than the dexterity of
professionals. Before a company has been assembled half an hour some one
is bound to suggest that a couple should show their skill; room is
quickly made, the table pushed against the wall, the chairs drawn back,
and they begin. Even when men are alone in a tavern, drinking wine, two
of them will often enough stand up to tread a _seguidilla_. On a rainy
day it is the entertainment that naturally recommends itself.

Riding through the villages round Seville on Sundays it delighted me to
see littl